Tag: Bob Hope

Caught in the thick of rain

It’s not Les Parapluis de Cherbourg , or Catherine DeNeuve with her trench coat.

Just anything over the head to stay, well, less wet.

We got out of the pool, just to be wet all over again.

Tropical summer.

Impeding traffic and time planned.

Here in Vietnam, it takes a lot just to stay cool and dry.

Survivalist and minimalist.

Yet, magician is coming in town for three days of show.

Guy Kawasaki will also be here, to tell his Standford basket ball story.

And the controversial Bob Dylan was also here a while ago.

Jane Fonda started it all (by visiting Hanoi), then Bob Hope and Raquel Welch in the South.

From then, it’s like, you got to make a stop at the once-a-battle-field, to gain street cred.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckeberg, Robert De Niro, Brad and Angela have all made this stop.

Mind you. It’s not a major airline hub.

But famous people want it incognito (The Pitts visited Con Dao Island, once a French prison).

I am sure these people got hit by the heat, the dust and the rain.

Call it “Roughing it in Vietnam”.

Their own Matterhorn.

To feel the Sorrow of War.

The  sadness of summer.

The frustration of dream unfulfilled.

What made people leave the comfort of their own homes, to come to a God-forsaken place.

Traffic is everywhere, especially at the French Colonial Roundabout.

You can’t even stand it, if it’s in Paris.

Yet people endure and emerge.

Having tried it hard to play catch up since 1985 and after, the country has been on the path of growth.

The trajectory went nicely for about twenty odd years, until recently.

Then, the rest is what is taken place now.

With its own “valley of death”.

Too much growth heats up inflation.

Too slow, the economy might crash.

It takes a village, albeit without the young people who had already migrated to urban centers, to come to term with modernity and progress.

Even with the best malls and fastest fast foods, no one can discount the force of nature.

So it rains, pouring rain.

And everyone dashes in and out of traffic trying to stay dry, to survive.

Nature, and human nature, are both blessing and curse.

Geography aside, human spirit and its resilience is all that’s left and working for this country.

I can’t hear the sound track of “It’s a wonderful world” today as played in Good Morning Vietnam.

I hear the chewing gum commercial of Rhythm of the Rain. And maybe Happy Together, to sell some Heineken, good to drown down one’s sorrow, amidst of misery, man-made or otherwise.

Number is up!

Mr Tarr, head of the Vietnam draft lottery, has died at age of 88 in Walnut Creek, CA.

A Nixon appointee, he headed Selective Service in 1970. He heard a lot of “Hell No, We Won’t Go”.

And now, his number is up.

I wonder how those who survive him, still lingering in the Canadian woods, think.

(Read “the things they carry”, the chapter about Tim O’ Brien got near the shore, and turned around to face the draft).

It’s been 50 years since that fateful 1963 year. It marked the assassination of practically everybody, from Kennedy to Diem, from Thich Quang Duc self-immolation to the exile of Madam Nhu.

Back then, my big brother got drafted too, out of pharmacy school. His baby died after having lived for a few days in the battle zone of Qui Nhon. So my mom and I flew up to be with them. Not a Bob Hope and Susie Q type of landing at the front. But at night, the two sides were at it (bullets flying everywhere).

My first taste of a real hot war.

Meanwhile, a little girl, our own flesh and blood, was buried somewhere out there, unvisited and untraceable.

Her number was up.

Saw Gatsby this week.

The writer’s comment “of all of New York, the multitude who crashed Gatsby’s great party, not a single soul showed up for his funeral”.

Thought you would like me to quote that as it relates to “Number is up” type of blog.

This morning, over coffee, a friend joked that he would like to have his ashes scattered. I said I would do it, if he stated it in his will (who wants to fight with his families as to his future whereabouts).

I know one thing: my niece is out there somewhere in Qui Nhon. Among many whose numbers were also up.

Selective service or not. I still held that draft deferred card. It says ” Draft deferred. Reason, sole male in a family whose  other son(s) was already active in duty”. Like it or not, my pharmacist brother number was up during that time.

Mine wasn’t. And we were interlinked, by DNA and draft numbering system. I attended my niece’s funeral. I hope to be there when it’s her father’s turn to join her. My brother deserves more than what Gatsby gets at the end of life.

Make your end, a standing-room only type of funeral. I will request to have “Whiter Shade of Gray” play at mine.

RIP Mr Tarr.

How can I tell her

Lobo was hot in Vietnam during the 70’s.

Decades later, on an American stage, his Vietnamese fans even invited him to perform live for music video.

Just a simple man.

“I love you too much to ever start liking you, so let’s just let the story kind an end…”

The contradiction and dialectic – friend and lover.

How can I  tell people about Vietnam.

Its soul, its sentiment, its sorrow (of war).

People on both sides don’t talk about it.

Nobody wants to talk about it.

In Matterhorn,  we got a glimpse of what it was like back then by a Yale scholar. It took him more than 30 years to pen his experience.

In Bao Ninh‘s Sorrows of War, it took him less time, but painful nevertheless.

It eats you up from the inside.

You can’t forget it.

Everyone was affected by it.

The younger generation only heard about it.

The older buried it.

But it grows inside, like a cancer.

Sudden loss, separation and interruption.

One cannot swim in the same river twice.

Maybe you can go back in place, but not in time.

First cut is the deepest.

Now you hear only sentimental songs whose lyricst barely scratch the surface.

Who will speak for them?

Who can understand them?

Betrayal and bewilderment.

How can I tell her about you.

I am just a simple man.

I love you too much to ever start liking you.

So Lobo incidentally touched the nerves (top of the chart in US as well).

Just you and me and the dog named Boo.

Rhyme and rhythm.

Chorus and replay.

It gets right under your skin.

And stays there.

The artist has moved on.

But his fans are still lingering.

Like the smell of napalm.

The taste of Pall Mall, among other PX supplies: peanut butter and jelly,

cheese and fruit cake.

Go go girls in leather boots and mini-skirts.

Bob Hope and the choppers’ drops.

When I saw you standing there, I felt the blood goes to my feet.

Baby, I love you to want me.

Unassuming, unpretentious.

Pure longing and pure loss.

Fleeting flirt and life-time sorrow.

On top of the sorrows of war.

On top of post-war reconstruction.

There is still a glimpse of hope, of finding love once again.

Maybe this time, it’s different.

Maybe, when I saw you standing there, I once again, felt the blood goes to my feet.

Nobody cares if Lobo no longer stays at the top of the chart.

To the Vietnamese heart which he once conquered, Lobo occupied a well-deserving spot. I once felt ashamed that I had liked him. Now I no longer want to please what’s trendy. Just stay there, my simple man, because “everything seems right, whenever I am with you”……..